Fifth Born

by Zelda Lockhart

  Why was I trying to tell Gretal, anyway? She thought she was better than me, just like LaVern. But as much as I tried to be tough, I knew that I was the weak one in the house, and Deddy was hurting me because he knew that if I was too scared to tell that I saw him murder Leland, then I would be too scared to tell anybody what he was doing to me. I let go of trying to be strong and slumped over in my chair and cried, and Gretal put her hands on my shoulders and cried too, and I was glad to have her there.

  Dont cry, Odessa. First of all, you caint be pregnant till you start your period, and I know you havent because your titsare too small. Besides, my ma said men caint help it, especially if they stay drunk all the time. They forget who they wife is and takes to fuckin anybody. Puttin their dicks in peoples mouths or butts. Ma say we just got to stay out that niggas way.

  I knew then that he had done it to Gretal too, and just like Mama, Devon had closed her eyes and moved out of the way, and pretended like it never happened to her or her daughter. But Devon still came to club meetings, she still grinned up in Deddys face and took the money that he was always giving her in front of everybodyGo tell Ranell and Racine what this motha-fucka got in his pocket. He made Mama and Devon think that without him they were never going to have anything, especially now that there was a black Cadillac and a van, something concrete to show the Blackburns and Laceys down South.

  And now Gretal. She knew all of this all along, but it never stopped her from coming over.

  Gretal I wiped my nose on my sleeve. Gretal, I saw Deddy kill Uncle Leland. I was standing right there in the hall and watched the whole thing. He found out that Mama and Leland had been kissing, and he killed him.

  Gretal snapped out of her daze and reared back in excitement like she had just heard the latest from the soap operas.

  Aint Bernice and Leland was gettin it on? She grinned now and threw her hand over her mouth.

  Its not funny, Gretal. Mama was complainin a lot, and Leland just sort of stepped in, and now hes dead.

  She said back to me, smacking her lips, Girl, you dont think its hot, because you still a little girl, but when you a woman, you gonna understand a lot.

  She wasnt a woman, with her makeup and understanding about periods and staying out of that niggas way. If she wasany wiser than me, why was she here? How could she avoid Deddy for sure? We were twelve and had cried together about being done it to by my father, and we both knew that there was no one to really tell.

  Memories of Gretal brushing her tongue, saying, You can get all the germs off this way, memories of Deddys hairy chest over me, penis, skin, blood, all swirled in my aching head.

  16

  Gallstones

  Deddy declared that I was staying home with Baby Jessie until Mama got home from the hospital. At home I kept a cold towel on my face to make the swelling go down. The other kids assumed from Deddys announcements that I had fallen down the basement steps again.

  I recollect you better either learn to keep your eyes on your feet, or you better not be thinkin you so different, and move on upstairs like everybody else. You more dented up than a run-over polecat. He laughed, and got all the kids to laugh with him. He stopped on his way out of the kitchen and cut his eyes over at me. I worked hard on doing what I had promised myself. I needed to look in Deddys eyes. Fire in them, is what my sanctified Uncle Chet used to say. But I wasnt so much scared of seeing that fire as I was scared that he would look in my eyes and know some part of me was dead forever.

  The doctors had said Mama would be fine, and everybody was busy being happy that things were getting so much better in our family, but Deddy had stripped away any hope that things would be different for me. Until now, despite the pain of Uncle Lelands death, somewhere deep inside myself I had kept a hopethat with money Deddy would no longer be drunk and nastybut that notion shriveled up like rotted seeds, ruined by the stink of Deddys sperm.

  The rest of the days of that week, I went to the store, and walked until I was sure Deddy had his nap and was gone back to the tavern. My right nostril was still split, and a streak of dried blood made a scab. The bruise on my right cheek pushed on the bottom rim of my glasses, but I concentrated hard on holding my head up. My teachers voiceNobody can take away your pride in yourself.

  On my way home from the Big G Market, I stopped at the corner store and was glad that Mrs. Johnson was upstairs. I would have given in to my shame if she had laid her quiet eyes on me, but Mr. Johnsons vision would be blurred and the smell of alcohol in his nostrils would drown out the smell of my blood dried in the cuts on my face. Stealing from him was easy that day. He dragged his feet around the store and talked about how much he liked the way I took care of my little brother, who I kept so close to my chest. The stolen chips didnt make Baby Jessie look any bigger inside my coat.

  As long as I was in Johnson Brothers store looking at comic books and reading my horoscope in the paper, my face relaxed into its childhood softness, but when it was time to go back to the house, I hardened behind the reality of cuts and bruises.

  On my way out the door Mr. Johnson slurred, Take care of that child. You smartyou sho smart.

  At the end of the week Mama came home from the hospital. She was gray and smelled like medicine. She was swollen and colorless like Granmama in her casket. I felt like I didnt really recognize her anymore, she wasnt who I fantasized would come home and love me like I needed her to, and she wasnt the woman I was so angry at before.

  She said to me, patting Deddys side of the bed, Come here, let me show you what they took out of my gallbladder.

  She barely eked out her words, and I was afraid of coming too near her hands. I kept my fists in the pockets of my jeans and treated her like a distant relative who remembered when I was small. I went to her bedside with my face twisted in uncertainty.

  She patted the bed again for me to come closer, but I didnt want her to get close enough to look in my eyes and see what I had done with Deddy. She glared at me sideways when she saw the scabs and bruises on my face, and then she touched my left eye, the eye that she took to St. Louis Childrens Hospital to have dilated once a year, the eye that had become a free experiment for medical students who needed to see what impact could do to the retina. I kept my eyes on the pattern of flowers on the bedspread while she touched me for the first time in years. Her fingertips read blame through the scars that Deddy left.

  You got so big while I was gone, she said, remorseful, but the truth about who she really saw interrupted her need to pull me onto her bed.

  Go find somethin to do, Odessa. Dont just stand here staring at me like you aint got no damn sense. Seein that Im sick, you can go make yourself useful.

  Mama held her arm cupped around her stitches and scooted carefully under the covers with her back to me. I rolled my eyes and huffed, angry that I ever let myself soften into wanting her to touch me. When she fell asleep, I came back into the room, crept over to the nightstand, where the gallstones sat in a clear plastic box, cold and outside of her body like me. I watched her breath steady, and wanted to climb in next to her.

  17

  The Baptism

  That night I dreamed I was sitting on the back porch at Grandeddy's house, watching the wind blow through Granmama's sunflowers, a field of them tall and yellow. The clouds rolled in, almost purple with the heaviness of rain. At the bottoms of the stalks I heard something rustle and carried myself out into the field to see, but the sound seemed to always be just ahead of me.

  When I was out of breath, I reached an opening in the field of sunflowers, and there beneath the light of the orange-andpurple sky was a freshly dug grave. I could smell the dampness of the soil heaped all around the square hole, and I knew that whoever had been rustling the leaves had been digging this grave for me. I started to run back to Granmama's porch, but couldn't find my way out of the maze of sunflower stalks. I woke up drenched in sweat and tears that stung the scab beneath my eye.

  I wanted to call out for Mama, but I knew she couldnt save me
. Loneliness pulled at my chest from the inside, and I cried quietly in the basement, beneath the rest of the sleeping house.

  The next morning was a Sunday, and I asked Gretal to come to church with us.

  I aint goin unless they servin dinner afterwards. Gretal laughed and did the Three Stooges slap at me, but when I didnt laugh, she frowned. Damn, girl, you dont have to be so serious.

  I want you to go, Gretal, because I think I want to get saved, but Im scared. Im scared of standing in a pool of water with Reverend Richards, and me in some robe like a hospital gown. What if my glasses fall off, or my robe bubbles up in the water like what happened to Sister Hutchinson last month?

  We both laughed a little, and Gretal looked me in the eyes and said, Yeah, Ill go.

  On the first Sunday of every month, Reverend Richards didnt preach. Instead, more than half the service was dedicated to baptizing the children and grown-ups in the church who had not yet seen Jesus. The podium and the benches for the choir were moved from in front of the pool pit. From the pews the whole congregation had a good view of the sunken cement baptismal. It was the size of a kiddie swimming pool.

  I entered the church and was always surprised to smell chlorine. That giant mural on the wall behind the baptismalblack Jesus being helped out of the river by two black guyswas uncovered and dominated the church with its power. My anxiety mounted, and I felt like the whole congregation stared at me when Reverend Richards called out the sinners.

  Some of you children of Mount Zion is old enough now to ask the Lord to save you! Do you love Jesus? If you want God today, come on up and get baptized!

  Then the whole church, including Gretal, started singing:

  Take me to the water

  Take me to the water

  Take me to the water

  To be

  Baptized

  Mama and my aunts did ad-lib with their voices in perfect harmony, sharp and intoxicating. I started to shrink and hoped to disappear.

  Go up and take the preachers hand and cry for your sins to be washed away, I heard some elder say.

  On past Sundays, Lamont, Roscoe, and LaVern had gone up on a first Sunday, with their heads down in embarrassment, while the church swelled in Amens and Hallelujahs.

  Aunt Geraldine called out, This is a spirited Sunday mornin, because already two of Mount Zions children, younger than me, were standing at the pool pit, bug-eyed and nervous. The congregation got more and more spirited and changed the song by adding in a few verses.

  Somebody who had already been saved got the Holy Ghost and started shouting and stomping out a holy fire, but all the sounds were muted now. I felt each second pass like days, and remembered Lelands casket on cold metal stands where the Lords newest flock now stood waiting to be saved.

  The whole church joined in, singing and clapping with the music. I couldnt avoid Reverend Richards eyes anymore and started up the aisle toward the possibility of being washed clean.

  He washed away

  all my sins

  and he made me

  whole

  Holy words and water, a spell that would make Deddy keep his hands off meIn the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!

  I stood waist deep in the freezing water in a white robe that floated up to the surface. Reverend Richards black robe was a giant balloon. He was in the water with his black slacks and his shoes. Aunt Geraldine stood at the steps that led down to the pool; her stout body blocked the way into the pool to keep me from running like a scared rabbit. Her glasses, giant binoculars, sized me up for my saving. She held on to the railing and reached with her white-gloved hand for my glasses. Come on, now, you dont need your other eyes to see Jesus.

  My hands were on each side of the pool, and I shook from cold and fear when Reverend Richards asked, Do you love the Lord? He held his white handkerchief up and waited for my mumbled reply before covering my nose and mouth.

  Between dunks I clawed at Reverend Richards hand to try and free myself. Despite the fact that over the years he had turned quite old and frail looking, he kept his grip and finished. Each time he held me under, his voice was muffled:

  In the name of the Father!

  In the name of the Son!

  In the name of the Holy Ghost!

  When we got home, LaVern and Roscoe were still laughing at me, and Mama was aggravated about how I embarrassed her. Youd of thought somebody was tryin to murder your ass. Actin a damn fool. The scab from my face was now floating in the baptismal with the blood I clawed from Reverend Richards hand.

  I went down to the basement to be by myself and watch it get dark. I felt nauseous from the day, but safer than the day before. I was glad that nobody bothered to call me upstairs to help get the boys ready for bed. I curled up in my church clothes and rubbed the sickness in my belly.

  The basement was the only sleeping space in the house that had a door that led to the outside. In the basement I could listen to Deddys footsteps and tell where he was in the house. I learned the difference in everybodys footfall, the heaviness of a heel coming down, the stillness between steps.

  There used to be a shelf in the cement wall where we kept our toys when we were little. But one day we came home from school and Deddy had taken a bucket of cement and filled in the shelf, toys and alldried-apple-head dolls, comic strips, a Fisher-Price clock. I drifted off to sleep, remembering baking flat little cakes in the Easy-Bake Oven.

  18

  Skinning the Kill

  The next morning I woke up with my bed filled with blood. For some reason, I had thought that my period would come like neat spottings. Gretal never told me that I'd bleed a river. In just a few seconds I had laid my tacky hands on everything in my room, trying to find something to stop the flow.

  When I didn't come up for breakfast, Towanda came down and brought me some of every kind of period paraphernalia, and helped me clean up before going to school.

  "You're an early bird, like me, Odessa. When you didn't come upstairs, I thought maybe today is the day." We ran back and forth to the basement sink, and she told me not to let Mama and Deddy know I was bleeding. "Whenever Mama knows I have cramps, the first thing she says is, 'You better not turn up pregnant.' No matter how many months I get my period, she says the same thing.

  And dont let Aunt Nell find out. You know how she is, like a old bloodhound.

  Mamas youngest sister could smell the blood from a cut on someones knee as soon as she walked through the door. If someone came in the room with a virus, or a runny nose, or blood oozing from any part of their body, she made her upper lip touch her nose. Then all the aunts would turn around to see who had been afflicted with what.

  Deddy knew I had my period. For him it was another secret that he made innuendo and bad jokes about until I felt completely invaded. Gal, you got something on the back of your pants, and then when I looked, he laughed out loud and got Lamont and Roscoe to laugh with him. He thought he knew me, but these days I knew that it was better to ignore him, or to laugh also to prevent him from weakening me. I studied his every move so that I would know more about him than he knew about me. I was never going to let him hurt me again.

  He had taken to going hunting once a month with the other tavern owners in St. Louis. He bought every piece of hunting gear on the market. He said he needed all five rifles, All for killin somethin different.

  One Saturday I was still half asleep. It was about four oclock in the morning. I could hear his boot steps echo in the vents over my head; then a truck with another tavern owner pulled up and blew, not giving a damn if the whole neighborhood woke up.

  I waited, half resting, for Deddy to be gone. As I drifted back to sleep, I heard Granmamas voice say, Hell come back with your blood. I tried to force myself to remember this as thetruck pulled off, and I slipped into the looseness of a deep sleep.

  In the dream, Deddy called the house, and I was the only one home. He said for me to come to him right now.

  He sounded both frightened and angry, and
I hung up, confused, not knowing if I should go to him before it was too late, or leave him in the woods to die. I ran out of the house as fast as I could. Already I felt guilty for having paused so long. What if he was dead because of the few minutes that I hesitated? Did I want him to die?

  I ran past Johnson Brothers store, past my school, right out of the city.

  Was that really what I wanted, for him to die?

  I could see him in the distance sitting on Granmamas porch in Mississippi, rocking in her chair. When I got to the foot of the stairs, I had to bend over and hold my knees to catch my breath. I was angry that there didnt seem to be anything wrong with him, and that he had managed to get me alone again.

  Our eyes met, and he said, Get a bucket and wash all this blood off the walls.

  I felt strong and solid in my anger, like running had strengthened the muscles around my heart. I stood there with the bucket and scrub brush and stared back at him, both of us shiny with sweat. Finally I dropped everything on the ground and said, No, Im not doin shit. I woke up and frantically searched for my Nakie doll that I now kept hidden under my mattress.

  That evening Deddy came in drunk and laughed at his own jokes. He trudged mud all the way from the front door to the kitchen where I was cooking and doing dishes. Mama was there with me, shouting commands for Towanda to comedownstairs and get Baby Jessie a new bottle, shouting for Roscoe to put out the trash, and shouting at me for everything I did backward while I was supposed to be cookingpunishment for not having the house clean when she got home from church.